So did a female racegoer who sought help from Jiovanni Ferri, the F1 storm trooper in charge of, among other things, the security system.

The woman explained to him, politely, "I'd like to get a different pass that will let me go where I need to go."

"Who the fuck do you think you are, lady? God?" raged Ferri at her.

"Well, actually, around here I guess I am," replied Mari Hulman George. "I own this speedway."

Far from embarrassing Ferri into retreat, Mari George had to track down her son, Tony, the speedway president, to intervene in her behalf directly with Ecclestone. Ferri, who must enjoy tremendous job security, not only kept his job but also deferred the decision whether to fix Mari's credential problem to Himself, Bernie Ecclestone.

A reporter asked speedway PR director Mai Lindstrom to provide the spelling of Ferri's name and job title for publication. "His title? I don't know," she said. "We just call him Monkeyfuck."

A local TV network affiliate, WTHR, also ran afoul of Ferri and another henchman, Pasquale Lattuneddu, a "representative" of Ecclestone's Formula One Management company, over a broadcast-rights agreement that the station's news director claimed violated the First Amendment.

"These kinds of agreements would be okay in Communist Russia," said WTHR news director Jacques Natz. "But we should be ashamed to turn over our video or to broadcast censored material here in America."

At issue was Ecclestone's demand that all the local Indianapolis stations broadcast a two-minute highlight tape, edited by F1, plus turn over to F1 within seven days of the event all masters of tapes shot by each station during race week. Two other stations actually signed the agreement and broadcast the tape.

Ferri seemed to delight in tormenting, rather than facilitating, the media in his care. Each day during race weekend, Ferri would change the entry points for the press. Despite the fact that the media parking area is directly adjacent to the media center, credentialed members of the press were routed a half-mile around the crowded infield to the lone scanner location.

"We asked Jiovanni why he didn't put in a separate scanner for the media," Nation related. "He told us, 'We don't have a separate scanner for yellow people, or red people, and so on.' We're not sure what correlation he was trying to make."

After Ferri and Lattuneddu ordered a third consecutive day of changes, the speedway media staff complained. "We don't care what you do, just do it, and quit changing it," they demanded. The next day, the primate-humping twins had large planters of flowers placed in front of the media center's main doors, blocking the entrance. Traffic was again rerouted.

In some small way, karmic balance was achieved unwittingly by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. The INS helped even the score the week preceding the race by turning away more than 200 F1 operatives who tried to slip into the country at Detroit by way of Canada, on bogus tourist (not work) visas.